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When did Vintage prices get like this??

I am relativley new on the vintage scene (only been collecting for 1 year). Scanning Ebay, conventions and comics stores some of prices for vintage are too say the least....high. Now talking to a few collectors here and there I keep hearing stories about people finding POTF Luke Stormtroopers, Han in carbonite and the harder find figures MOC at conventions, comics stores etc... for $60 and this was only like 7 years ago! Other people getting 12 backs for less than a $100. My question is when did the massive jump in prices really take place? was it gradual or did EP1 really cause a huge market stir?? or are these people simply lying to make me feel bad for what I keep doshing out now.....

I'm sure that others no better than I, but when I started looking into completing my vintage collection around 5 years ago or so, the prices that you seem to be looking at were around then. I don't think the Ep I influenced things that much. For instance, I paid about $70 for a vintage Death Star Gunner loose at a show in Pasadena. I think I paid around $50 or so for the Death Star playset. Some guy had an incomplete Endor Tree thing and let it go (not to me, bummer) for $14. I look casually, but while high, the prices don't seem to be climbing too much.

I think that all the new stuff is pulling down the prices at the convetions here (TX.) they are coming down abit. I sall twoo Amanamans go for $45.00 each a few months ago. I wish the Yaks and Snaggs would come down they are the last two I need and don't really feel like spending $100.00 each.

"One day I will become the most powerful Jedi (Sith) ever." Anakin Skywalker, Epi.II

I completed my collection (minus some rare variants- Vinyl Jawa, wind-up R2, etc.) in 1993, with the only figures I paid over $50 for were Han in Carbonite ($95) and Yak Face ($64). I think the big jump in prices came the year before the Special Editions, as sellers prepared for the hype. That would make it about 1995-96 or so. I see many a place that drops its prices now because no one wants to pay inflated rates on merchandise that's been on display for years, only getting dusty and faded by the sun!

I think Hasbro re-releasing old molds for vehicles has caused the value of vintage vehicles to drop. The A-Wing is a prime example, I remember seeing a loose one selling for $400 and boxed ones around $800; but when the POTF2 version came out the prices dropped to around $200 loose and $600 MISB. The same thing happened with the Falcon, TIE Fighter and X-Wing.

"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence… When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis

evenflow, I sense some emotions in you, if only I could determine what emotion that is. This is why I never decided to collect Droids or Ewoks figures, because they'd be too much, and cause my hair to fall out.